Character Modeling and Massively Single Player Online Games

'Bout that time again.

I was going to make a post for New Years'... but then that didn't happen. I spent New Years with The Old Republic and a few good friends and my buddy The Bottle. It was pretty good. SO, a belated Happy New Years' to everyone. 2011 was said to be a pretty crappy year for a lot of my friends, so hopefully 2012 will treat y'all better. From the sounds of it, things are turning out well so far. We shall see.

Anywho.

The first part of this is about my character modeling class. The second part, marked by large red text below, will be a quickie review of SWTOR. Skip to whatever you want to read about.

A required warning - boobs below. Shield your sensitive eyes! 

When I first began character modeling... I actually procrastinated a day or two before I actually sat down and began the hand (which is what we start with). I was scared that I wouldn't be able to do it, just like I didn't understand what to do or how to think about it when I was in Model Creation (MCR) a few months ago. I understood it theoretically, which was a good leap from MCR where I didn't understand a damn thing, and I understood what to look for in the actual mesh... but I didn't have confidence at all.

Let me be clear; the actual lecturing is some of the best I've had in my time at Full Sail this month. I don't know if it's because I'm starting to understand, or if Marcus is just awesome, or both. I think it's both. It's me I didn't have confidence in, in my ability to understand. Back in MCR, we were told, "Make it look nice and don't have ngons or laminate faces." But I didn't understand what looked nice, or how one got a laminate face so that I could avoid creating one. The instructor was the type of guy where if you didn't SEE it when he showed it to you, he just wasn't sure how to explain it. In a room full of n00bs, you can tell how that would get frustrating.

I eventually caught on - laminate faces occur when you extrude and don't actually move the face you extrude. ngons (as in... the variable 'n' in a geometric shape) can almost always be corrected back into 3 or 4-sided polygons. I began to be able to create the shapes needed for it to look nice. But I still didn't understand the function of the wireframe, and it took me almost a full month to get it.

Between SAL, which taught me about what UVing really means, and about the hypershade, and about being quicker and more intuitive with Maya, and now CDC (Character Design and Creation), I get what you need in a model, organic or geometric.

Marcus showed us a video that actually explained why the model might have areas of pinching and how to correct it. He explained to us why a neat mesh is necessary and, more importantly, how to make one. He taught us junctions, he taught us about arcs, taught us to think about the functionality and shape. Now that I've actually had someone point these things out to me... I GET it. I understand what it means to maximize the use of a mesh, but not to push it beyond what it can give you (giving you bizarrely folded polygons.

What really helped was me seeing it on a human body. I've always been better with human anatomy than still life objects, even on traditional art. I had a lot of fun doing the in-class topographical adjustment.

So here's the hand:

We started by making a vague boxy shape of a palm and the index finger, shaping it to match the image we were using as reference (not in here), and then duplicating the finger for the other three. We shaped those, attached it to the palm, and then cut the first finger we did in half for the thumb. With some shaping and an extrusion from the edges of the palm, we connected the thumb to the palm and rotated it so that it was in a more natural position. (look at your thumb. Now back to me. Go ahead - try and make it face up like the rest of your fingers. OW, amirite? It's tilted to the side and hangs a bit lower than the rest of the hand even when the fingers are loosely spread.

After that, it was a matter of adding edge loops around the palm to get the shape needed (your palm is surprisingly flesh. Just look at it! LOOK AT THAT GOB OF FLESH).

The folds at the bottom of the fingers are a diamond shape with a vert at the center pushed up to make the fold. The connections between the palm and fingers - the webbing, if you will - are diamond junctions. They create the sufficient geometry to make sure you can get 2 connections on each side of the finger (which is the amount of length-wise edges you have on each side). The purpose of junctions is to create bend points and the geometry to make the bends and connections. Well, the functional junctions anyway.

At the base of the thumb and one or two other places, you'll see a star junction. These are a point where 5 edges connect to one vert. This is a necessary evil. It creates a change in direction (For example, we'll see later where the breast connects to the torso, there are several star junctions because the breast drapes down, while the torso is sort of even up-down left-right), but it gives one point more power than the others around it to change the shape. By default, each point has 4 connections - up and down, left and right. Five is needed to create that change in direction, but any more than that, and you're building badly and need to adjust your geometry to make room.

Geometry has to function - do as much as you can with as little as possible because you need to render it - but it also needs to have breathing room and should not be pushed past its limits. THis creates breaking and bad folding of an actual polygon (as opposed to the mesh curling as a whole to create the bend in a shape).

After the hand, we moved on to the torso. If you had a male, your life was easier. You didn't have to do boobs. And you'd think I'd have an easier time of it, being a possessor of boobs, myself... nope! They still came out lumpy. I need to fix that.

For the torso, we split it in half and started with the front top. I prefer to give myself the necessary geometry and then shape, because I get easily confused. Even doing that, I had to start the torso over about three or four times before I finally managed to match the geometric shapes I needed to the mesh references we were given.

For a human body, there are several locations where you need specific star junctions and loops to create the body. These junctions and loops follow the muscle and bone structure of the human body. After all, if you're creating something digitally... why not follow your reference as closely as possible?

This follows a newer school of thought. Until a few years ago, the idea was to do whatever you needed to do to those polygons to get the shape you needed in as few polys as possible. the Smoothing process would take care of the rest. This causes screaming pain to the geometry, and is probably nearly impossible to animate by today's standards. Our in-class assignment was to retopologize an old-style model of an arm to today's neater, nicer standards. Though modeling is hard and seems complex, in truth, the actual system within the mesh is very simple. 

There's an abdominal loop, a cape loop, and a loop near the trapezius muscles and along the spine. Loops help long sections of the body fold and bend. After all, when you lift your arms, it's your pectoral muscles AND your clavicles AND your trapezius doing the work. They all deform and shift as the body moves. The cape loop runs under the breasts/pectorals and around the top of the shoulder. Since it goes AROUND these regions, it requires several star junctions to make the curve and directional-changes.

HEre, the mesh is actually mirrored (thus the merging of the wrists where it shouldn't - but it's not permanent, I swear) and smoothed, but if you're doing it right, the smoothed version isn't all that different from the normal version.

You also can't quite tell, but the boobs are really, really, really lumpy in this. I can't quite figure out how to shape them right.

Other than that, you can also see what we mean by arcs - to get the nice, smooth, curved shape, you can't have jagged edges from square to square. It needs a slope, a smooth arch.

Here's the torso without the mesh on it. I still need to fix the shaping, but the general idea is there. And you can see the rice-grain-sack boobs in this angle of the model much better. XD

And yes. In order to model, you bring in pictures as often as possible. You're not making shit up until you get really good, and even then, you still take from reference. You're recreating things. You NEED to know the subtleties of that form. But you can definitely see how the smoothness of the mesh translates to the smoothness of the body. It makes turns where the musculature does, which is why anatomy is so important.

Next up, I'll be working on the leg and feet, and then on the head. After that, it's shaping and adjustments, basic UVing, and hopefully getting some hair in.

I'm really enjoying this. Even though after I work on this for several hours, I see EVERYTHING IN WIREFRAME WHY GOD WHY.

Anyway. Yeah.

SWTOR

 So. ASide from school, I've been drowning my life away in Star Wars: The Old Republic. You're like, "BUT ELLA YOU DON'T DO MUH-MORE-PUH-GUHS WHY ARE YOU PLAYING THAT?" Firstly, I don't play MMORPGS. I dunno what this muhmorepuhguh thing is. Secondly, BioWare made it. Thirdly, Star Wars. And fourthly, BioWare totally invented a new game genre - Massively Singleplayer Online games. 

SWTOR is the most amazing blend of story and MMO I've ever seen. I like that I don't need to talk to anyone ever to go through all 8 storylines (up to as much as 16 with all the variety in decisions and characterizations of your PC). And it takes me about a month of constant playing to get to the end of a storyline. Holy shit, yeah? 

But if I wanted to, I could team up with friends or randoms/pugs to complete very difficult sidequests that require more people. You can also PVP if you want. Or you can just talk to people as you progress. The lovely thing is the environments are sparsely populated because the actual players populate it. 

And it is POPULATED. 

This sold over 1 million physical copies in the first week. This doesn't even include digital copies. This beat Skyrim by AMETRICFUCKTON. Skyrim was fun, but SWTOR keeps my attention way more. 

I didn't expect to, but when I made my first 8 characters, the one I stuck with was the Imperial Agent. It's a He, and a Chiss. I thought I'd be playing a female Jedi or a Sith or something. Nope. I went for the more mundane intelligence agent. 

It's everything I've ever wanted from a spy story. I honestly have never seen this pulled off so well. THere's intrigue and combat, betrayal and loyalty. Without giving away too much, Darth Jadus is nucking futs. 

The cover system is sort of unusual. SOmetimes it breaks the pacing of combat, especially since my character is specialized as a DPS sniper, which requires near-constant cover. It's much more instinctive to run up to the enemies and whack them with lightsabers, or to just stand there like the bounty hunter and blow shit up from a distance. But I love the combat anyway. It's fun. I like being ranged DPS, it's always been my Thing in games. I did the same in League of LEgends. And my range with my sniper is fantastic. "LET ME JUST STAND BACK HERE WHERE YOU CAN'T REACH ME, K?" 

Each class has its own set of companions that do not intersect with any of the others, The stories also do not ever intersect. You're in the same areas as others from your faction (Empire or Republic), but you have no idea what they're doing. By playing all the classes, you can get a better idea of the overarching plot that touches all of them (For example, certain characters listed as missing in one story might be encountered in another). You have the same side quests, but you have different class quests. It's a good way to do it, I think. And it's all very, very, very well voice-acted. 

I'm almost done with Act 3 on my Imp, so I also began an alt or... five. My gunslinger on the REpublic side is farthest along, and the story is much more light-hearted and fun than the Imp one, but still very good. 

Except that the Republic royally fucks up way more than the Empire. THe Empire is very efficient and gets their shit done. THe Republic is always losing weapons and asking you to fetch them back. *facepalm* 

The Empire is much more honest - they will do whatever they need to to get their Empire and to win the war. The Republic acts like goody-two-shoes, but they have just as many bad things going on as the Empire. The fact taht they hide it makes them inefficient and makes them look bad. It's like the Empire is willing to take on your hardships, as long as they're ruling over you. The Republic will do fuck-all to help you. You're on your own. The price of freedom. 

The Jedi are very, very, very anal, too, and are always stopping the work to ask their precious Council. I understand, lore-wise, what they're doing, but I personally enjoy playing Empire more because making Light Side or Dark Side decisions doesn't make you really good or really bad. There's much more nuance and room for rationality. 

The Republic side has its positives... I just need to resist the urge to punch every magistrate and official that has lost a weapon or gotten their people killed out of stupidity. 

It's certainly a nice shift from previous BioWare games where reason was for the Paragons, open palms, and LS characters, and punching babies was for Renegades, closed fists, and DS characters. 

I also don't feel the need to please all my companions (though I admit, I cheat and give them gifts from time to time... if you can't charm them, buy their love!). SInce there are no save-games, I play my character as he is meant to be played, not according to the wishes of my companions. I can't reload and try again, so I need to make it count. 

THere are also a lot of good references to the original KotOR, which is really, really nice. THere are hidden surprises all over, fun jokes, great lines... At the same time, it's not afraid to go a little darker than the original movies (which, if you think about it, were pretty dark... they just played it off. I mean, ffs, Anakin fell into a pit of lava and strangled his wife...).

The release was relatively smooth. Not a lot of game-breaking bugs (*coughBETHESDAcough*). The servers have not failed. The introduction of more players was gradual, letting the cap rise slowly. 

The real bugs began coming up later, and there's some controversy over the graphics; supposedly, BW turned off high graphical settings due to an engine issue (they were using the Hero Engine... what were they expecting?), which makes it look rather disappointing. Some people are saying there's a DRM reason, I personally think they just broke something in a patch since the BEta players said they used high quality graphics just fine. I presume BioWare will own up soon, one way or another, or risk losing a lot of players. 

As a modeling major, it is disappointing. 

As a story whore, I don't care. 

Overall, it's a lot of fun, and I enjoy teaming up with some friends to take on Heroic quests or Flashpoints (which are independent stories for small groups... like short stories in a series of novels!). For a first venture into an MMO, BioWare has outdone themselves, and I can play however I want. Any hiccups going on right now are sure to be resolved in the coming patches in Q1 and 2. 

In the meanwhile, I'm making 8 more characters on another server. XD I love it too much. 

9/10, will play again forever. 

Though I refuse to acknowledge that KotOR book written by Drew Karpyshyn as canon. That was trying to tell the fans of the original game "shut up and move on." >|

Have some music: